Friday, September 27, 2013

Montage # 124 – Sheherazade

As of October 18, 2013, this montage will no longer be available on Pod-O-Matic. It can be heard or downloaded from the Internet Archive at the following address / A compter du 18 octobre 2013, ce montage ne sera plus disponible en baladodiffusion Pod-O-Matic. Il peut être téléchargé ou entendu au site Internet Archive à l'adresse suivante:https://archive.org/details/Pcast124

Today’s
podcast explores three works, who share a common story line – the Persian and
Arabian legend of the Thousand and one nights, and in particular the Persian
Queen that narrates the many stories, Scheherazade.

The story goes
that every day Shahryar (The King in Persian) would marry a new virgin, and
every day he would send yesterday's wife to be beheaded. He had killed 1,000
such women by the time he was introduced to Scheherazade, the vizier's
daughter.

According to
English geographer and translator Sir Richard Burton, Scheherazade was described in
this way:

"[Scheherazade]
had perused the books, annals and legends of preceding Kings, and the stories,
examples and instances of bygone men and things; indeed it was said that she
had collected a thousand books of histories relating to antique races and
departed rulers. She had perused the works of the poets and knew them by heart;
she had studied philosophy and the sciences, arts and accomplishments; and she
was pleasant and polite, wise and witty, well read and well bred."

Against her
father's wishes, Scheherazade volunteered to spend one night with the King.
Once in the King's chambers, Scheherazade asked if she
might bid one last farewell to her beloved sister, Dinazade, and began telling her a story. The King lay awake and listened with awe as Scheherazade told her
first story. The night passed by, and Scheherazade stopped in the middle of the
story. The King asked her to finish, but Scheherazade said there was not time,
as dawn was breaking. So, the King spared her life for one day to finish the
story the next night. So the next night, Scheherazade finished the story, and
then began a second, even more exciting tale which she again stopped halfway
through, at dawn. So the King again spared her life for one day to finish the
second story. And so on…

The King kept
Scheherazade alive day by day, as he eagerly anticipated the finishing of last
night's story. At the end of 1,001 nights, and 1,000 stories, Scheherazade told
the King that she had no more tales to tell him. During these 1,001 nights, the
King had fallen in love with Scheherazade, and had three sons with her. So,
having been made a wiser and kinder man by Scheherazade and her tales, he
spared her life, and made her his Queen.

Scheherazade and
the stories from the Thousand and one nights have been a source of inspiration
of many musical works, including operas by Weber and Cherubini, and an Aladdin
Suite by Carl Nielsen.

The three works I
chose capture different aspects of Scheherazade – Ravel’s early overure (ouverture
de féérie or fairy tale overture) captures the magic and “fairy dust” we
freely associate with story telling and great fantasies. The song cycle that Ravel worte 15 years later, however, presents Scheherazade under a different
light – exotic, mysterious and enchanting.

The more famous
suite by Rimsky-Korsakov is more aligned with the story-teller. The leitmotiv
that represents Scheherazade (heard played by solo violin) morphs as stories of
Sinbad the Sailor and the Story of the First Kalendar get rendered by the
orchestra. The culminating movement, depict a feast day in Baghdad and Sinbad's
ship (6th voyage) is depicted as rushing rapidly toward cliffs and only the
fortuitous discovery of the cavernous stream allows him to escape and make the
passage to Serindib.